ESA launches FLEX and Sentinel-3C on Vega-C from French Guiana
Vega-C's eighth flight carried Copernicus Sentinel-3C and the FLEX vegetation mission into orbit from French Guiana.
what happened
A Vega-C rocket (flight VV30) launched the Copernicus Sentinel-3C ocean and land monitoring satellite together with ESA's FLEX vegetation-fluorescence Earth Explorer satellite from Europe's Spaceport in French Guiana on September 15, per ESA. Sentinel-3C deployed first, with FLEX following about an hour later; ESA's European Space Operations Centre confirmed signal acquisition from both spacecraft. It was the eighth Vega-C flight and the rocket's second launch of 2026, per Spaceflight Now.
why it matters
Sentinel-3C extends the Copernicus program's operational ocean, land, and atmosphere monitoring data that commercial resellers and downstream analytics customers build on, while FLEX adds a first-of-its-kind vegetation-fluorescence dataset. The launch also keeps Vega-C's cadence on track, a data point for other European government and commercial payloads booked on the rocket.
for who
EO data resellers, agtech and climate-monitoring customers